Alpha

Why does every one posting here that I have seen assume that Alpha will even be playable? Haven't you all ever been in alpha testing before?

Because Alpha is playable, just not nearly feature complete.

Every first Alpha release I have ever tested has not been even remotly playable. Usualy been hardware testing. Just some things moving around. Almost nothing implemented and such. Beta is the playable part.

I didn't realize you can alpha test something without running it!

But seriously, most here understand that, particularily in the beginning, we wil only be testing a very small portion of the game, heck, we could even just be testing the planet generator to make sure it doesn't break at first. But by the end of the alpha weshould be 'playing' something, thought its still likely be missing elements the final version will have.

Mike

If this will be a real alpha most of us will test game stability more than anything. I expect a lot of crashes, bugs, disconnects etc.

Way too early to commit to what a first release alpha will include, but I think most of us at Uber consider it at least representative gameplay and whatever tools are needed to start that gameplay. Beyond that, time will tell.

I don't think I've ever been in an Alpha that was fun in itself, you can look at a game in them and think ok this will be cool. But usually the polishing that happens before Beta adds a hell of a lot, even if the Alpha is feature complete (which they rarely are). This is why I didnt put down the extra money to be in the Alpha, I'm perfectly happy waiting for the Beta, but it will be interesting to here what people think and say about the Alpha.

As far as I know,

Alpha = art assets and low level gameplay mechanics
Beta = Gameplay mechanics and debugging.

I think it might be possible to play a late alpha, but certainly not early alpha.

When you say "way too early" it sound like the alpha won't start in atleast 2-4 month:/

Will the alpha start? i guess early Q2?

When it's ready.

Mike

Alpha SMNC was the sh1t.

Don't crush their hope :twisted:

I wouldn't read anything into our lack of willingness to throw out dates other than "We've learned what happens when you provide a date and you miss it". Even the nicest, most patient group tend to scream for blood when you do that. Therefore, we don't do it.

Aw.. from the sounds of things you plan on making it actually look like a proper game before releasing the alpha. I wanted to play white block wars. We could pretend it's minecraft with nukes.

Don't worry it'll still be plenty rough around the edges. There may be some white boxey stuff in it.

I wanted to fight an army of purple and black checkered cubes

I honestly don't want to play the alpha. I don't even want to play the beta. I would rather just wait for the nice, polished, complete game once it's done. But . . . gotta make sure it runs well on Linux. Alas, a slave to duty.

This can be arranged. Delete/replace the texture folder.

This. Plenty rough around the edges and balance that would make you flinch but it is so much fun to watch a game grow.

Well i played the Minecraft alpha. It was a barebones game where you could just place and remove blocks like in the current creative mode.


To me:

Alpha = core game mechanism
Beta = Polish

With all respect to you and your work progress you still gave a full game release estimate of summer, http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=36872. do you still believe you will be able to live up to that?

I'm beginning to feel like that we would be lucky to have an alpha release at that time.


For all that I care I would just really like to play with stuff like the planet generator and such.